Fleet Management System – Impact and Advantages
Published On Jul 12, 2016
As the technology nowadays is evolving with a rapid pace, transportation industry has found its touch too. The logistic industry is now becoming more and more digital with several advancements including the Fleet Management Systems (FMS). Apart from individual truck drivers, FMS has done a great help to fleet owners to manage their entire caravan with ease and keep a track of their trucks’ whereabouts.
What is Fleet Management System?
Fleet Management is actually more than keeping a track on trucks, it’s a virtual manager which helps you to work efficiently right from your couch. It can keep an eye on fuel consumption, safety, maintenance updates and many more. The fleet management system can be defined as a part of Internet of Things (IoT) and its impact. A good telematics system allows the exchange of information between a commercial vehicle fleet and its central authority (like a fleet owner or dispatch office) and leads to effective fleet management by helping keep an eye on the vehicle’s route.
Advantages of Using a Fleet Management System
It’s just a couple of years since fleet owners used to wait for a call from the driver or client to get the confirmation of delivery or breakdown. The transporters also had to rely on the drivers’ word for mileage and had to keep a manual check on the service interval.
But thanks to today’s fleet management system, all the aforementioned things can now be easily tracked through the desktop computer placed on your office desk. Below are some of the major advantages of FMS:
Vehicle Tracking
One of the best things FMS has done is to enable vehicle owners to keep the real time track of their trucks. GPS installed in the trucks as a standard feature of FMS tells the exact location of the truck. It has made operators bring transparency in their delivery system as they could tell clients a precise delivery time and estimated time as well.
The vehicle tracking is also helpful to track breakdown. For an instance, if the truck is standing at a point for long, you could call the driver up or if the driver calls you in case of breakdown, you know the exact location to reach and help. Vehicle tracking saves a lot of time & effort and ensures timely delivery of goods.
Fuel Consumption Data
Fuel consumption accounts for more than half of the operating cost of a truck and if it goes wrong, the results could be catastrophic. Thus, if your fleet of trucks is equipped with the FMS, you can easily find out the exact amount of fuel used on a trip and what were the parameters like speed, load and engine temperature throughout the route.
Analysis of this data could provide you the details about driver’s behavior which can be used to help them improve the driving skills.
Maintenance Updates
It’s very common to forget about the truck’s service due time or part change schedule as business owners are too busy earning profits and drivers are too busy running errands for them. With the advent of FMS, what has happened is, owners or operators are reminded to take their vehicles for services at regular intervals and hence the overall vehicle performance gets improved.
Vehicle Management
The FMS also keeps a check on things like which truck number has been allotted to which assignment and which one is free. With this information, logistic owners can manage their fleet efficiently and increase their profit margins.
Some Famous Fleet Management Systems
Today, the fleet operators can opt from two types of FMS, one is offered by OEMs, while the other one is brand neutral and is offered by private firms.
Tata FleetMan, Tata’s very own telematics solution that guarantees higher productivity, provides fleet status, alerts, reports, and a trip management platform, amongst other things. Mahindra Engineering Services in collaboration with Mahindra Telematics, provide telematics solution to several automobile industries including airline, BPO, construction companies, schools, transport companies, and logistics companies.
Mahindra Telematics also offers Mzone4, a comprehensive and effective mobile resource management platform catering to logistics companies and fleet operators. Ashok Leyland’s ALERT is a GPS-based bundle of telematics services for the commercial vehicle sector and offers online operational reports, possible deviation of routes by drivers, long halts, etc. Volvo Trucks’ Fleet Management System, Dynafleet, monitors trucks and drivers through its two services (Positioning, and Fuel & Environment) that provide visibility of not only the fleet, but also the entire operation. Eicher Live, Eicher’s very own FMS demoed at Auto Expo 2016 is an advanced telematics solution that drives profitable fleet management by monitoring the movement of trucks, fuel consumption, and maintenance needs.
Talking about private FMS, some of the popular names are Trimble Transport and Logistics and Fleet Robo. Trimble is a GPS based real time vehicle tracking and FMS to gain fleet visibility, enhance productivity, reduce idle time, ensure safety and provide better customer service. Fleet Robo helps a fleet operator track real time location and movement of vehicle in transit on digital map apart from truck scheduling, maintenance and monitoring.
Conclusion
The FMS has truly been an effective innovation for trucking industry which has not only improved the efficiency of operations for operators but has managed to keep the things aligned as well. These FMS are very effective to bring the needed transparency in business which is required for a strong relationship between client and service provider. However vehicle telematics and fleet management system have a long way to go as these technologies have not been accepted entirely by the trucking industry yet.
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